Recording
Recording sessions for Dangerous took place at Ocean Way/Record One's Studio 2 in Los Angeles, starting on June 25, 1990, and ended at both Larrabee North and Ocean Way Studios on October 29, 1991, making it, at sixteen months, the most extensive recording of Jackson's career at the time, where before he usually took six months.
After Jackson and Bottrell began work on some songs including an early version of "Dangerous", he decided to recruit Teddy Riley to overlook some of the album's production. For the first time since 1979, Jackson was without longtime producer Quincy Jones, who had produced Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad. According to Jones, he convinced Jackson to have Riley replace him in the production of Dangerous.
Some album sessions were put on hold due to Jackson's health problems as he had spent time in a L.A. hospital for weeks after complaining of chest pains. When he was released, he continued work on the album, desiring to take his music to a harder sound than in previous albums, inspired by his sister Janet's edgy sound in her album, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814. Prior to working with Riley, Jackson had desired to work with producers Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Antonio "L.A." Reid. Around the same time, his brother Jermaine Jackson, who had signed with La Face Records, was set to work with them and since Jackson didn't tell his brother about it before, considered it as an act of betrayal, though he later dismissed that notion in years since. Jermaine's song, "Word to the Badd", was composed with lyrics aimed negatively at his brother, and were later revised to lyrics aimed at a bad relationship.
Songs that were recorded for the Dangerous album but were eventually left out included "Monkey Business", "She Got It", "Work That Body", "Serious Effect" (which included rapper LL Cool J), "If You Don't Love Me", the ballad "For All Time", which had been written during the Thriller sessions but was recorded around the time Dangerous was recorded; "Superfly Sister" and "Blood on the Dance Floor", the latter two later issued on Jackson's remix compilation, Blood on the Dance Floor: HIStory in the Mix.
Read more about this topic: Dangerous (Michael Jackson Album)
Famous quotes containing the word recording:
“He shall not die, by G—, cried my uncle Toby.
MThe ACCUSING SPIRIT which flew up to heaven’s chancery with the oath, blush’d as he gave it in;—and the RECORDING ANGEL as he wrote it down, dropp’d a tear upon the word, and blotted it out for ever.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)